


Saturday Morning at Monmouth Manufacturing

by backbones



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-27
Updated: 2014-11-27
Packaged: 2018-02-27 05:02:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2680121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/backbones/pseuds/backbones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Noah waits for his friends to wake at Monmouth Manufacturing—with guests. Hint: there’s four of them, and Noah knows he has to keep not one, but two more secrets (again).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Saturday Morning at Monmouth Manufacturing

Before Noah Czerny died, he had it easy. His parents had money, he always had food and an overly-enthusiastic mother waiting for him at the table, a father he would wake to in a perfectly-tailored suit and a folded newspaper; he had a generously large house with a white picket fence, was a satisfactory enough student at Aglionby, had enough friends, and a really, really, really nice car he could experience all those things with.

Sometimes he can remember what it _feels_  like—some kind of feeling he  _knows_ but doesn’t know what it is. All he knows is it was what he was before: belonging without trying to belong, not having to use every semi-existing fiber of his being, every minuscule detail, every strain of straining energy to make himself  _something—_ a something that even he knew, wasn’t really anything. Needless to say, he was a ghost, literally and figuratively.

Death complicates things.

He began a teenage boy who belonged. Now he is a teenage boy with semi-existent paper-thin skin, straw-blond hair, and eyes that bulge from his head like they’re trying to escape it, with something under his eye he can’t recognize, but still does, like a word on the tip of his tongue he can’t think of but still can’t shake. He doesn’t think about it, though, because whenever he does all he feels is dread, like an impending, knowable, all-too-familiar, death. 

But there were some things that made death easier, like the three boys from Aglionby and another girl from 300 Fox Way, the now-famous Gansey-Lynch-Parrish-Sargent quartet that had—somehow—made it all under the roof of Monmouth Manufacturing. 

The morning began to pour through the windows in the middle of the warehouse the moment Richard Campbell Gansey III’s alarm clock reaches 6:30 AM. It goes off like it always does, because Gansey is the type of person that doesn’t turn off their school alarm during the weekends, and as soon as the alarm breaks the silence, Gansey slams it back into silence for another eight-and-a-half minutes.

Petrichor tickles Noah’s nose, or what would be a nose, if he had a real nose. Perhaps it was Gansey who made him think of petrichor, the way he tosses in his tangled duvet, a hand covering his closed eyes, his brown hair rolling over the pillow in a crown around his head, a king even in an engrossed sleep.

It rained the whole night, but it wasn’t raining anymore. Now all that is left are the ghosts, like Noah, the cold rain that sticks to the glass of the windows, the shiver that rolls down Gansey’s spine. 

It makes Noah want to shiver, too, and he almost does. But he remembers Gansey’s alarm is going to go off in another six-and-a-half minutes, so he reaches over—with a hand, but not really a hand—to switch it off.

It would be a shame if it woke Blue Sargent.

She’s curled up in a position that can only remind Noah of a cat, with her spiky hair rolling over her pillow in a much less graceful crown than Gansey’s. Her sweatshirt rolled up midway through the night, and Noah can see the most skin he has ever seen on her, an entire expanse of pale stomach, a small bellybutton and even a little peek of her bra, red lace that looks a little too much like blood—and it feels wrong,  _wrong_ , so he averts his eyes, or something like eyes.

Noah will say nothing, because Gansey broke the rules—those rules he shamelessly ran off in his head every time he enjoyed the company of his friends. But Noah already knows he’s entirely incapable of playing favorites.

It’s 7:00 AM, and unlike Gansey and Blue, the second Lynch brother, disguised-in-devil rather than devil-in-disguise, who both worshipped God and harnessed more God-like talents than anyone else—Ronan Lynch—is not asleep. 

The sole window in his room is covered, so it’s dark, the kind of dark that makes 7:12 AM feel like midnight. His room in particular gives off a sense of timelessness that anything else in Monmouth Manufacturing, or maybe even in Henrietta, sans Ley Line. 

Perhaps it was fitting for someone like Ronan, who could dream objects, living things, all at will—small, big, somewhat useful or entirely useless—or unwillingly—mostly harmless, but sometimes very, very dangerous.

This was also fitting for someone like Ronan, because nothing was ever easy for Ronan, and sometimes Noah thinks that maybe, just maybe, Ronan Lynch is a little more complicated than death.

But he isn’t. Even if Ronan would like to think he is.

This is evident in the way his shaved head lay on his pillow, relaxed deep into the fabric, but also strangely tense, like he thinks something may try to take him from his bedroom. Noah cannot decide if he looks like a small child or a soldier broken from war.

His naked back faces away from the widow, the intricate lines of his tattoo—memories and nightmares, dreams and future, all things he does not want to forget, so much so it is etched permanently into his skin—disappearing into the wall.

He’s trying to cool himself, but he’s sweating, and it’s making the duvet and sheets under him dampen. It makes Noah want to sweat too, and he almost does, but then he remembers it’s supposed to be a cold morning. It is only Ronan that is sweating, and he is not sweating from the heat.

It would be a shame if he woke Adam Parrish, but Noah knows he would rather hurt himself than Adam, in true Ronan Lynch fashion.

Noah remembers what Ronan said only a few weeks ago:

Blue eyes flickered to Adam, who dressed in greasy coveralls and smelled strongly of sweat and gasoline. It released something within Ronan—pheromones, he recognized. Then there was the way Adam looked back at him, delicate and both real and unreal in a way that reminds Noah of old photographs, faces just as indignant—making Ronan’s heart skip a solid beat.

It took everything in him not to choke when he said, vaguely sarcastic: _Maybe I dreamt you._

This Ronan is now silent, swimming in the dark, watching this Adam sleep almost as silently. His brown eyelashes hug is cheeks, tanned skin paled from sleep and the lack of sun. The little skin he shows illuminates in the darkness, and something in Ronan ignites again, and a hand—bony and awkward like a inexperienced teenager, but strong and scabbed like a teenager teetering on adulthood—reaches to touch his cheek.

His touch is light, like if he presses too hard, he would not just wake, but would drift away in the darkness. Adam curls into it, and Ronan’s eyes widen just a little— _fuckshitfuckfuck_ —before he realizes he is still sound asleep, his morning breath light on his wrist.

Ronan’s pulse quickens, just a little, and he moves away before he forgets how to breathe.

Perhaps he thought that maybe, just maybe, if he allowed himself to lull into sleep, Adam would disappear with everything else. Perhaps he thought if maybe, just maybe, he closed his eyes just for a moment, a terror would take control of him, and steal him in the middle of the night. Perhaps it was both, but even for Noah, it was hard to tell the lies from the truth when it came to Ronan Lynch. 

It’s 8:03 AM, and he does, finally, somehow, find sleep. 

It’s quiet at Monmouth Manufacturing when the now-famous Gansey-Lynch-Parrish-Sargent quartet are asleep, tossing and turning, drifting in and out of nightmares and dreams and sometimes dreamless sleep, all tortured kings and a single, equally tortured queen. 

Noah cannot sleep. He may be tortured, but he is not a king.

It’s 8:53 AM, and a single wasp drifts carefully past Adam Parrish and grapples at the door. It’s trying to find a way out, the way trapped animals do, desperately, its wings  _buzzing buzzing buzzing_  through the silence, but is drowned out by the kind of breathing that comes with deep sleep.

It was never easy for Noah to know who among his friends was going to die first, but then again maybe it was the one thing that was easier that came with being dead. 

Death is a complex thing, that equally tires, tortures, haunts, and keeps some kind of emptiness within him—of Noah Czerny, from Henrietta, Aglionby, a mother and father, a really, really, really nice car, somewhere—that leaves him grappling like the wasp does now, with a single word on his tongue  _he knows_ _he can taste_  but still can’t remember.

He brings something like a hand, or hands, to cup the wasp. It buzzes even more desperately, and Noah knows it’s because of its flight or fight instinct that drove all living things, but something within him aches, because he feels that even that single wasp knows he is being held by a dead thing.

Noah smashes it in his palms, and it falls to the floor.

The buzzing stops, and all he hears is the breathing.

Noah moves to wipe his hands on his semi-existent Algionby pants even though he knows nothing will leave them, because no matter how hard he tries, how much he desperately, desperately tries—he never seems to be able to get his hands dirty.

But the sleeping kings await, and soon, just soon, they will finally wake.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fanfic in a verrryyyy verrryyyy long time. I got my idea from fuckgansey (tumblr) when she suggested Noah would make the boys' beds when they were out. As you can see, it got a little out of hand. Let me know if you liked it; it means a lot. :)


End file.
